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Sunday, 9 September 2012

Murder Miners Releases on Xbox Live Indie Games

Murder Miners is an Xbox Live Indie Game which released on the Xbox Marketplace this morning for 240MSP. "Wait, this isn't Halo news!" I hear you cry. Whilst this is not officially a Halo game, there are nods to Halo left right and centre.

Murder Miners is like the illigitimate love child of Minecraft and Halo:CE. It's a deathmatch shooter (including that 3 shot kill pistol), but you also have a "Mining Gun" which can be used to build.. well whatever you like, really.

One of the games I played had a fort which a player had built himself with lava holes around it, he stood atop a tower taking sniper shots at the scrapping rabble below them.

To some people this will sound like an absolute nightmare, he'd obviously spent some time on the server alone building his fort before other players joined and started killing him. He had a massive advantage over everyone else, but that's part of the attraction. What other game would allow you to do that? And what other game would offer such an unusual challenge to the other players?

I've only played a handful of matches, but I'm imagining a game mode where no-one goes for kills for the first 5 minutes and just constructs themselves an impenetrable Lego fortress, before the game switches to CTF or Slayer. you don't just have other players to contend with, but also their death-trap laden forts.

The game is clearly not finished, there are several screens throughout the game warning you of this fact, but there is something special here. The uncluttered UI, the no-nonsense shooting, the destructible scenery and of course the fact that you can construct yourself some cover out of thin air whenever required.

Murder Miners is an unpolished gem, I don't know enough about developer JForce to really say with any certainty if we'll ever see it receive the polish it needs, but there's a great game in there nonetheless.

There are some technical issues, the framerate can crawl at times and once or twice my shots didn't seem to register, but I guess you have to forgive that when they tell you up front it isn't finished yet.

At 240MSP it's about half the price of a Spartan Avatar outfit, you don't really have any excuse but to go and buy it now. Since Microsoft decided to bury the Indie Games portal deep inside the nether regions of the dashboard, you may find it easier to download it through Xbox.com

As I would see its a great and imaginative combination of two of my favorite gaming series,blending what makes both great and loses nothing in the process except for rather gets to be something more.This game can possibly be a great "party game" for friends to simply mess around in together.Toss on a blank map and set the timer for 15-20 minutes,assemble yourself a fortification, and when the timer hits zero have at one another!Game of Capture the flag could have unbounded pathways to the flag,or hide it totally.Not your thing?Go blast zombies with your closest companion and perceive to what extent you can last.The concept is so simple regardless of the possibility that somebody has never played previously they'll learn pretty much in a split second.